At the burn barrel, Ella trickled gas and sauntered quick to the house. She searched for Ginny’s hiding place, where she’d have stashed the DNA evidence, per the cop shows she and Saul liked to watch, some Saul-sperm-smeared panties being a particular threat, checked the back room closet’s highest shelf, under the blankets of Grannie’s cedar hope chest, in the freezer behind an ice tray. Found no panties at all. She slumped on Grannie’s kitchen floor under the table. Her peachy dress later burned with the rest. She’d bumped her head. The table could burn. The four chairs were blue and wooden. It would take a whole day to clean the place, several trips to the dump, which was open on Sunday.

“Saul, check the barn,” she’d called and clapped the front door shut. “Close the gate.”

Grannie never believed in trauma. She’d laughed at the word when it came into style. The world was made by trauma. Pray you have some or your life is dull.

After disposing of no DNA, she’d watched the two men glide up the hill from Grannie’s kitchen window, then the backhoe descend too fast from the oak, a tree not native to these parts anyway, weave and bump over boulders, the mare swinging in her sling, her head dancing crazy. They met at the pit at the bullet hole in the mare’s head.

“Life is never dull.” Or, “One less thing.”

“Took the pistol with her, I gather.”

Yes. Ginny had taken the pistol, of course.

(Or was that before the DNA?)

Before and after the DNA, after the pistol, they rolled the mare into the pit. Ella kept her eyes on a ship-shaped cloud off the Saint’s Head, the highest jag, and listened to reports from the barn. “The cob is missing—his saddle—headgear.” Then she dragged an old blue chair from the kitchen and sat in the shade of the walnut for the backfill. Dan the Baby flung items he’d found in the loft, winged them into sheets of smoke and dirt raining down into the pit from the backhoe’s bucket. Old oil can, sheep shears, dyke shovel, rotten oxen yoke, ditching spade. Objects of Dan’s misplaced fit.

“Think twice,” though Saul wasn’t interfering. “Might want it someday.”